| SRI LANKA WATCH |
| Northern Irish parties get 24 hours to agree on power share
By Paul Hoskins of Reuters Britain surrendered control over Northern Ireland's day-to-day affairs on Monday but London will resume direct rule within 24 hours if the province's feuding politicians fail to agree when to share that power. Britain says the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of hardline Protestant cleric Ian Paisley and predominantly Catholic Sinn Fein must start governing together on March 26 or face an indefinite dissolution of Belfast's power-sharing assembly. The DUP has demanded a delay until May, however, and hopes for a breakthrough now focus on the possibility Paisley and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams could attend a meeting on Monday in a bid to end years of political instability in the province. DUP members, who support British sovereignty over Northern Ireland, still refuse to talk to IRA political ally Sinn Fein almost a decade after a peace deal that largely stemmed 30 years of bloody sectarian conflict. The DUP has doubts over the support of its Irish nationalist foes for the rule of law, despite a 2005 pledge by the IRA to disarm and pursue its aim of a united Ireland peacefully. The guerrilla group was responsible for half of 3,600 deaths during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Britain says it is aware of reports Paisley and Adams, who also opposes any postponement, are set to meet but that it is up to them to decide how to proceed. The DUP demand for a delay means London is unlikely to get a power-sharing administration up and running by the end of Monday and Britain insists its only alternative will be to close Belfast's stop-start power-sharing institutions indefinitely. Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, has indicated, however, that if the feuding parties could agree among themselves on another date for power-sharing, it might offer a way out of the deadlock. Northern Ireland's assembly was set up under the 1998 Good Friday peace accord but has been suspended four times since. It was last mothballed in 2002 amid spying allegations and the one chaotic meeting since then was cut short last November when a bag of homemade explosives was thrown into the building. |
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